井边圣母

For a long time this Madonna hung under a bigger name than the one it carries now. It was thought to be a Raphael, and you can see why someone would want to believe that, given the soft grouping of the Virgin, the Christ Child and the young John the Baptist around a stone wellhead. Scholars now give it to Franciabigio, a Florentine painter who shared a workshop with Andrea del Sarto and spent much of his career in his shadow. One detail gives the quieter hand away, the oddly muscular little Baptist, more strained than graceful. The wellhead is not simply furniture. Water and the well were old symbols of baptism and of Mary herself, so the setting quietly names what the child John will one day do.